The present disclosure relates to a fixture assembly and, more particularly, to a gas turbine engine airfoil fixture.
Gas turbine engines, such as those that power modern commercial and military aircraft, generally include a compressor section to pressurize an airflow, a combustor section to burn a hydrocarbon fuel in the presence of the pressurized air, and a turbine section to extract energy from the resultant combustion gases.
The compressor section includes a case circumscribing an engine axis and axially alternating arrays of stationary vanes and rotatable blades. Each vane array may be constructed of multiple vane clusters distributed circumferentially about the interior of the case with each cluster supported by the case. Some vane arrays include clusters of cantilevered vanes.
Precision engineered parts such as gas turbine components may be manufactured by direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) which is an additive metal fabrication technology sometimes also referred to by the terms selective laser sintering (SLS) or selective laser melting (SLM). DMLS components such as stators and rotatable blades are typically final polished with a Vibratory Mass Media (VMM) process. The VMM process submerges the components in a vibrating bed filled with a blend of non-abrasive media and an abrasive paste. Although effective, the VMM process may result in some differences in the desired surface state over the entirety of each component.